Marco Arment on Amazon’s recent increase in Prime pricing:

Amazon making its retail business worse to prop up another part of its ecosystem shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Amazon doesn’t want you to be only a retail customer anymore, and they’ll keep making it harder to be.

He believes that the increase in pricing is due to Amazon’s decision to push their Instant Video service onto Prime customers.

I’ve never been an Amazon Prime customer. Although I consider ordering Prime every few months, the truth is I just don’t order enough from Amazon to make it economically viable. And unfortunately for Amazon, this $20 price hike is likely to push me further away from the possibility of ever ordering it in the future.